Online video game tournaments are run by companies in the gaming industry. Players typically pay a fee to enter a tournament and then the tournament server sets up a schedule for pairs of players to play matches against each other. This requires that each pair of players scheduled to play a match must play the match at the time indicated in the schedule so that the results are reported back to the tournament server by a fixed time specified in the schedule. The winner of a match goes on to play the winner of another match at another time specified by the tournament server. Such scheduled times may not be convenient or practical for the players to play a match. Such approaches fix players to schedules that may result in fewer players entering because of their time constraints and/or may result in player frustration because they have to modify their plans to adapt to the tournament schedule.
In other systems, players may accumulate points from each match, with the prizes being determined by the number of points each player accumulates in a fixed number of games scheduled by the tournament server.
To date, online video game tournaments have been run with several hundred to several thousand players. Yet these systems suffer from several problems that make running very large tournaments, such as with hundreds of thousands or a million players, online impractical.
Tournaments typically require a pre-determined number of entrants so that the prize pool can be predicted and the players scheduled. This presents the problem that the tournament cannot start unless there are enough players to match the structure of the tournament, and guarantee a prize of a certain amount. For example, it may be necessary that the number of players be a power of two to ensure each player has an opponent.
Such tournaments that schedule times for matches require the players to be available at a specific time to play. Yet online video game players often want to play immediately, or within a short period after logging into the tournament server. Moreover, the logistics of running an elimination tournament online may only scale to several hundred players, as the time schedule required to support thousands of matches may become unreasonably long. This means all participants in a tournament need to dedicate an increasing amount of time to win a tournament, which escalates with the number of participants until participating is impractical for many players.
Some tournaments require the players to schedule their matches themselves. In this case the logistics of negotiating suitable match times between players adds time to the tournament process, making the time to complete the tournament variably longer for some other players. For example, players who win their match and promptly proceed to the next match might have to wait a significant amount of time for the outcome of the match that is to determine the player's opponent.
Players who perceive their skill to be higher than other participants may feel burdened by having to play many matches against players of inferior skill, which they may feel to be a waste of time and not enjoyable. Online tournaments generally only allow for a linear path, requiring them to play multiple weaker players in the early rounds for example, to win the grand prize, so that this may deter strong potential participants. Conversely, players with lower skill may feel they have no chance to win a tournament with significantly better players participating.